Columns

In the coming school year, USC Lancaster’s 59th year, we will celebrate two significant anniversaries.
This year we will mark five years of access to four-year degrees through Palmetto College, and on Oct. 5 our Native American Studies Center on Main Street in Lancaster turns five. These milestones present significant opportunities for current and future educators.

In Acts 5, the wonder-working apostles won multitudes to Christ, but the jealous rulers of the Jews rose up to oppose them. They arrested and jailed all the apostles, but God intervened by sending one of his angels by night to open the prison doors and lead them out.

He then told them: "Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life." The next morning they resumed teaching the people there.

Like everyone who watches the news, I have been inundated with the story of the protest in Charlottesville.
After days of watching CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox News and MSNBC, I’m troubled by the lack of focus on what actually happened in Charlottesville last Saturday. Most of the coverage has concerned President Trump’s comments about the event.
Many of the news outlets are not reporting news as much as taking another opportunity to display their political bias and hatred toward Trump.

When I saw TV coverage of last weekend’s events in Charlottesville, Va., I had a hard time distinguishing some of the civilians from the police and National Guard.
Some of them arrived in camouflage and riot gear, wearing helmets and protective vests. A few carried guns.
Some of these armed protesters openly identified themselves as “Unite the Right” supporters to reporters on the scene. The allegiance of others was not as clear.
It seemed to me they were spoiling for a fight. And they made sure they got one.

There is nothing “right” about racism and hate. It’s a learned disease, and the best antidote is unity.
This weekend’s events involving white-supremacist groups are as disturbing and disgusting as they are heartbreaking. The attack was a stark reminder of the darkness of hate. We must come together, as we have before, to confront the issues that chip away at the very foundation of who we are and what we stand for as a country.

Here’s the issue: SCANA (the parent company of South Carolina Electric and Gas) and Santee Cooper (the state-owned utility that provides power for 11 local electric co-ops) tried to build two nuclear reactors and failed. They just pulled the plug on the projects, costing $9 billion and 5,000 jobs – so far.
Here’s the question: Who is going to pay for this disaster?

At the end of September each year, Lancaster County mails property tax bills for real estate (homes and commercial buildings) and personal property (boats, business furniture and equipment, manufacturing, etc.).
While nobody likes getting a tax bill, it’s important that they are sent to the correct address. Having the correct address on file is the taxpayer’s responsibility, and that prevents you from having a late fee due to never receiving the bill.

S.C. businesses are much more likely to be white-owned than businesses on average in the United States, and less likely to be owned by women.
At the same time, businesses owned by men and by whites are more valuable than minority and female-owned businesses, and the difference in value in South Carolina is even greater than the average national difference.

Now that the legislative session is over, I wanted to do something a little different and tell you about some legislation before the General Assembly that I did not support this year.
A friend and fellow lawmaker shared the advice that the job of a legislator is 60 percent constituency work, 30 percent stopping bad legislation from happening and 10 percent passing good legislation. During my first year in the House, I have tried to model my time and effort around those three things.
Here are three bills that I did not support and why.

Phil Noble’s July 30 column asked: Is the American Dream alive or dead?
Mr. Noble is an expert at identifying problems. His usual solution is more state money.
His piece offered no solution to the lost American Dream. Democrats have no solutions to problems today that actually work.
He said there are two South Carolinas, with great divisions of poverty, racism, isolation, hostility, violence and bloodshed between them. This is true for many states and cities in America, not just South Carolina.